Yamada Ryō—a high school girl who isn't particularly fond of socializing, whose thoughts jump erratically, and whose behavior is strange and hard to pin down. She looks like someone who can't quite muster interest in anything, but in truth, she's got a rock-and-roll brain through and through.
As for that description, Miss Yamada Ryō would actually be a little dissatisfied.
"Isn't that introduction a bit too vague?"
In her view, it completely fails to highlight where her real charm lies.
Alright then—let's put it another way.
Yamada Ryō is a weirdo.
"Heh."
Being called that would actually make her break her usually placid expression, narrowing her eyes like a cat and showing a look of genuine enjoyment.
Yes—weirdo is, to her, a compliment. And from an outsider's perspective, it's also a remarkably accurate description.
That's precisely why, on the day Yamada Ryō suddenly realized she seemed to have entered a parallel world, her first reaction wasn't panic or unease, but—
Wow. This is interesting.
To explain how this started, we need to go back to a day when she'd arrived early at the live house as usual. She was chatting with a certain curly-haired boy while they wrapped up their routine slacking and headed back.
She had been walking behind him when, all of a sudden, it felt as though she'd been disconnected from the world—everything went black. When her vision refocused, she found herself in the waiting room beneath the stage.
Nearby, her friend Ijichi Nijika was rehearsing intensely. Kita Ikuyo—who'd previously disappeared and somehow returned—was there too, along with a pink-haired girl keeping her head down, clearly terrified of strangers. She seemed to be a band member Nijika had brought along.
But Yamada Ryō had no idea how she'd gotten here, as if a chunk of her memory had been cleanly cut out.
After puzzling over it for a while, she remembered a certain curly-haired friend who spent his free time immersed in online chatter, and only then did realization dawn on her.
Like those bizarre game settings Kai talked about… maybe I really did get transported to a parallel world?
A situation that would've sent most people into a panic left Yamada Ryō feeling—
So interesting. Will I get dragged into some messy love triangle with sisters next?
She even felt a faint thrill of anticipation.
Unfortunately, the melodrama she imagined didn't unfold. Instead, the relationships she'd originally had showed subtle differences.
For example, the curly-haired boy Narumi Tōru—whom she used to chat with and trade jabs regularly—wasn't her friend here. He didn't even appear at her side in this parallel world.
Instead, he showed up as Gotō Hitori's childhood friend, now a high school band bassist performing at the live house alongside her.
So the MMO-addicted shut-in otaku turned into a rock band guy?
Watching Narumi perform from the audience, Yamada Ryō blinked in confusion. She'd thought about tricking him into learning bass and making a small profit off teaching him—but actually seeing him play under the spotlight left her oddly dazed.
It felt like discovering that your gamer friend—who spent all day yelling "○○ is my wife" while grinding games—had suddenly acquired actual musical skill and impressed everyone around him.
"Well… his bass playing isn't that great," she muttered, pouting as the crowd of fans swooned over Narumi's performance.
Still, I should figure out a way to help him improve… Definitely not trying to fleece Kai or anything.
Just like that, Yamada Ryō calmly accepted the fact that she'd been inexplicably swept into a parallel world.
Since there was no mysterious voice in her head explaining what was going on or telling her what to do next, and no one suddenly grabbing her shoulders and shouting, "We need to escape this place," Miss Ryō gave it some thought and decided—
Let's just take it one step at a time~ Staying here to mess around for a while doesn't sound bad. Might just be a dream, after all.
As long as she had a bass to play and friends by her side, she didn't really care about the rest. Nijika and Ikuyo weren't much different from how she remembered them, either. Being able to keep spending time together like this was nice enough; figuring out whether this was reality or fantasy didn't seem all that important.
But for some reason, her real-world friend Narumi felt different in this world.
"Caterpillar, you're probably busy practicing all day, so you wouldn't want to drink something like junkie happiness soda—stuff that makes you fat and lazy, right?"
He'd use excuses like that to swipe Gotō Hitori's freshly bought Co○a-Cola, then take a sip and sneer, "Tastes like toilet cleaner."
"Is it because you're used to hiding in dark corners that you can't stand being exposed under bright sunlight, so all you can do is crawl into a cardboard box and avoid people?"
After Bocchi once again performed wearing a mango box, he'd mock her like that from below the stage—until she flushed bright red and threw the box aside.
"Why do you care? Got nothing better to do? You going to lecture me about smoking—what are you, my mom? Or did my secondhand smoke bother you?"
When Bocchi happened to run into him smoking in the lounge and timidly reminded him, "Smoking too much is bad for your health," he snapped back viciously—only putting out the cigarette after she slunk away in defeat.
"Ugh. What a terrible person."
Watching all of this, Ijichi Nijika made no effort to hide her discomfort with Narumi's behavior. Ryō, who'd witnessed everything alongside her, simply sipped her canned coffee calmly.
"Should I tell my sister to cut back on working with him and his band…? If this keeps up, Bocchi-chan might actually get bullied to tears…"
"Mm… I don't get it," Ryō murmured instead of answering.
"What don't you get?"
"Don't you think Kai's acting more like he's putting on a front—being mean just for the sake of it?"
"I've never thought that at all… I mean, why can't he just be genuinely awful?"
"Because I don't feel any malice in what he's doing."
"Ryō, you'll get burned someday if you keep seeing people in such a good light… And why do you sound like you know him so well? Did you two interact before? You're even calling him that…"
"I…"
She opened her mouth, about to let the answer slip out—but when she saw the curly-haired boy and Bocchi clashing again over something trivial (mostly Bocchi getting mentally overwhelmed), she stopped.
It wasn't Yamada Ryō's conscious choice, but some kind of force restrained her, preventing the words from coming out.
And in that instant, Yamada Ryō realized—
She wasn't the heroine of this world.
She was merely one cog among many.